News and Updates

Following the publication of the 2013 Green League last week, the Guardian Higher Education Network hosted a 2 hour live webchat last Friday. This is how the Guardian introduced it: "Universities are the true thought leaders of society and if...

Here are the details that HEA has released about this year's Green Academy participants.  Two things strike me about all this: [i] the breadth and potential richness of it all; [ii] the lack of clarity about just what proposed outcomes...

The Director of Ofscoff's Equalities Office, Dr Rhoderic McSwain, confirmed in a statement today that he was looking into the scheme that the Chinese authorities put in place for numbering plants during the 2008 Olympics: "This was a bold initiative in...

It started in the Welsh Marches: walking, good pubs (one with a cabaret by refugees from the Hay Festival), and English song in and around Ludlow.  Hard to beat. World Environment Day I missed this, spending most of the day...

The penchant for vacuous marketing slogans has spread to universities, it seems, if aspects of the HEA's new Green Academy programme are anything to go by.  Most institutions on the programme have chosen a title for their project which reflects...

The UK Funding Council are consulting on HE performance indicators.  Hefce says that the indicators currently cover the following data: widening participation indicators non-continuation rates (including projected outcomes) module completion rates research output employment of graduates. ... with HESA providing the...

I began drafting this post at the end of March, on a train slowly making its way through that most soothing of landscapes, the Wiltshire Downs.  I was returning home from three days on the road: grandchildren (an education in...

The UN general Assembly is devoting 24 days in 2013 to an open working group on sustainable development goals.  Of these just part of one day (in November) is devoted to education, with "employment and decent work for all", "social...

...tossing their heads in sprightly dance. No.  Mercifully not daffodils, but snakeshead fritillaries at one of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's splendid reserves in the Cotswold Water Park. I didn't count them, of course, but OU researchers did.  Good to see...

There was an unusual flurry of activity in Shed Share last week.  It followed this request from the student union at the London Institute of Education (IoE): Hello. I am part of the Sustainability Network at the Institute of Education,...